Bottling The Beer

Bottling is a simple process, but a little time consuming.
This step is more fun if you have a friend to help you...
perhaps the same friend who will surely help you drink
your homebrew!

Preparing To Bottle

First, we'll need bottles. The bottles should be
brown or green glass for best results, and they should
not be twist-off bottles. Proper beer bottles have
a smooth, raised lip at the mouth of the bottle to
provide a good surface for a positive seal once capped,
and are made of heavy glass. We will need about 54
12 oz. bottles, 40 16 oz. bottles, or 30 22 oz. bottles.

We
clean the bottles thoroughly, rinse, and then sanitize
the bottles. Iodophor sanitizer is best
as it does not need to be rinsed (if the solution
made in the proper ratio- 1/10 fl. oz. per gallon
of water). We'll drain the bottles on a bottle
tree,
in a
very clean
dish
rack,
or by having a friend hold them upside down just
before we fill them.

Our bottle caps also need to be sanitized. Our caps
should not be boiled (some caps have soft liners
which can peel off the cap if boiled, and others
have special liners to absorb oxygen, which can be
damaged by boiling), so we will soak them in Iodophor
sanitizing solution. After soaking in the sanitizer,
the caps can be rinsed with hot water that has been
sterilized by boiling for 10 minutes. Rinsing with
this hot water also softens the inner plastic liner
of the caps, which will help to provide a good seal.

Now we will prepare our priming sugar. This is a
small amount of sugar that we need to add to the
beer just before bottling. This sugar will cause
a small re-fermentation in the bottle, which will
provide natural carbonation. For priming, we can
use 3/4 cup of corn sugar or cane sugar, 1 cup of
malt extract, or 1/2 cup of honey. We'll add our
priming sugar to 2 cups of water in a small stainless
steel sauce pan, and boil it for 15 minutes. Then
we cool the priming sugar solution by carefully resting
the pan in a cold water bath, being very careful
not to splash water into our now sterile priming
sugar. Our pan has a lid, so we'll use that to help
keep it from getting contaminated.

Once the priming sugar is cool (under 80 oF),
we'll pour it slowly (to avoid excess splashing)
into our fermenter of beer. We'll use our sanitized
racking cane to gently stir in the priming sugar,
being careful not to stir up too much sediment from
the bottom of the fermenter.

Filling The Bottles

Now we
are ready to fill our bottles! We'll set up our
siphon as described in the previous section,
and attach a bottle filling wand to the end of the
siphon hose. The bottle filling wand is about 18" long,
and has a special valve at the tip which allows liquid
to flow through it when pressed down, but stops when
lifted. This will help us avoid making a huge mess,
but it is still a good idea to have a small pan or
an old towel under the bottles and a small amount
of spilling is inevitable.

With the bottle wand we fill the bottles one by
one until all the beer has been bottled. The bottles
may be capped immediately, or try this tip to reduce
the amount of oxygen in the bottles:

HINT: Instead of crimping the caps immediately
after filling the bottles, place the caps loosely
on the bottles and wait 15 minutes before crimping
the caps down with the bottle capper. This will allow
CO2 to fill the space at the top of the
bottle and will help to purge the oxygen from the
bottles. Oxygen absorbing bottle caps will also improve
the quality and shelf life of the beer.

Now that the bottles are filled and capped, it's
time to hurry up and wait! The bottles should be
stored at room temperature (60- 70 oF)
for the first few days, then at cooler temperatures
(50- 60 oF) for a week or two and until
consumed. It is best to not store the bottles in
a refrigerator until the beer is fully carbonated,
because the cold temperatures will slow or even stop
the carbonation of the beer.

After about two weeks, we will chill a few bottles
and try them. Excellent! It is now time to brew another
batch, before this one is gone!......

We
Hope you enjoyed our "Virtual brewing class"! We welcome
your feedback about this tour, especially advice about
how to improve it!
To contact us, send us an e-mail: 7bridges@breworganic.com,
or give us a call: 1-800-768-4409.

If you are ready for the next step, mash-extract brewing, please continue
to the next page. If not, we hope you come back soon!